


The Librarian and the Unexpected Villainess

by cynassa



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:56:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynassa/pseuds/cynassa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lamia keeps turning up wherever Cassandra is and distracting her from her very important librarian work. Then there's a coffee date (but not date-date) and another coffee (really hot chocolate) date that's probably a date. Then real life gets in the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Librarian and the Unexpected Villainess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shadaras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/gifts).



> This work is AU after the episode with Santa Claus.

The progress of her first mission to prove she could go it alone was …not promising. So far she wasn’t even sure whether the bell she was looking for was a real bell or some wishy-washy metaphor. The last person she was sure would have it now definitely didn’t and was too dazed to give her a clue to its next location. And now she was stuck on a sidewalk a mile out from Minnesota because the door was acting up.

 

Cassandra let out a brief scream as she was dragged away from the road before a firm hand clamped over her mouth. She was spun around with a hand around her waist, the hand still over her mouth and found herself staring at Lamia from a few inches away. Despite the hand over her mouth, she yelped.

 

“Don’t yell when I take my hand off,” she was warned. She nodded frantically. As soon as Lamia took her hand off Cassandra’s mouth, she pinched that hand and kicked her in the inside of her thigh, where she calculated it would hurt most. Unfortunately she didn’t put enough force into it, and Lamia only tightened the hand around her waist. She tried to scream and found a pair of soft warm lips over her own. Her eyes slid closed. The clock at the back of her head (multiple clocks really, some of them running mental experiments, one on time for everyone else, and one that was really a timer running down) told her that the pressure of lips against her own hadn’t lasted for four seconds.

 

 Her mouth moved soundlessly after Lamia moved away.

 

“You’re not making an awful lot of sense right now,” she informed Lamia.

 

“My hand hurt and I needed to shut you up.” Lamia rolled her eyes, “What, was that your first kiss, princess?”

 

“No!” Cassanda stuck her chin up. After a moment’s pause she asked, “Why? Did it seem like a first kiss? Because it definitely wasn’t. Definitely not.” It was her fourth. The first time had been an experiment in fifth grade, the second had been during her extremely brief rebellious phase after she had learned she had a death sentence in her brain. The third had been part of a series of mishaps three months ago involving an artefact from a Dionysian temple, a vampire cult and three goats.

 

“Whatever,” Lamia said and shoved something into her hand. “Keep that safe.”

 

“You tried to kill me,” Cassandra said.

 

“A few times,” she admitted.

 

“You tried to kill me and then you _kissed me_.”

 

“It wasn’t personal,” Lamia argued then seemed to think better of it as one of Cassandra’s agitated fluttering hands struck her in the nose. “I don’t have time to explain right now, the Serpent Brotherhood’s swarming here and they’ll find me soon. Just keep that safe, I’ll find you later.” She swanned off elegantly and melted off into the shadows, which was difficult seeing as it was three in the afternoon, but she did it with style.

 

“You _are_ the Serpent Brotherhood,” Cassandra called out belatedly, and then muttered ‘sorry, sorry’ as people passing by the alley seemed to notice the noise for the first time. The thing Lamia gave her turned out to be the (non-metaphorical) bell she was looking for, so it wasn’t a complete waste.

 

“It just kind of fell into my lap,” she said, with a nervous smile when Jenkins asked for details on her mission. There was no reason not to tell him about their murderous arch-enemy and every reason to do it but she didn’t. Her lips tingled, maybe with the lie and maybe in memory.

 

Jenkins made a ‘hm’ sound and Cassandra had just about worked herself up to tell him everything when he spoke, “You put it down as a befuddling device.”

 

“I’m not all that sure what it does,” Cassandra admitted, “but people definitely were being… weird.”

 

“The user was directing them to behave according to his or her desires.”

 

“Mind control?”

 

“The mind is a complex thing,” Jenkins said, finally putting the bell away, “very difficult to control. No. More will-control really.” He finally seemed to notice that there was something she was uneasy about and he looked at her patiently until she finally smiled and said, “what’s for dinner?” in an approximation of her usual cheerfulness.

 

It was two weeks, another failed team effort and an only-mildly-successful solo effort before Cassandra ran into Lamia. This would not have happened if the artefact she was dealing with hadn’t decided to give her a real time view of the solar system with a scale-distortion that allowed her to see _everything_ if she rotated it _._ It also wouldn’t have happened if Cassandra wasn’t trying to avoid going back to the Library where she and Jake would be polite at each other and Ezekiel would firmly pretend that nothing at all was weird and they had never been anything more friendly than mildly antagonistic colleagues (since it was Ezekiel, it was also possible that this wasn’t a pretence at all.)

 

Lamia dropped something that was heavier than it looked into her lap. Literally, since Cassandra was sitting at a diner with what looked like a space cowboy decor.

 

“Are you trying to curse me?”

 

Lamia had the nerve to look irritated at the perfectly reasonable assumption.

 

“I think it is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis given the data,” Cassandra tried.

 

Lamia glared at her like she was stupid and then left, clacking the stylish heels on her stupid stylish boots on the wooden.

 

“She probably can’t even fight in those,” Cassandra said aloud, and then got pissed off because she probably could and did and looked hot doing it. The artefact turned out to be a ball with perfect pitch on various spots and a Pied Piper type of power.

 

In Abu Dhabi there was a djinn that turned out to be not a djinn but a puppet controlled by a puppet-master who had gotten frustrated and Lamia steered Cassandra around with a protective hand between her shoulder-blades. This should have been annoying but she had a knack for predicting when Cassandra was genuinely interested and when she was merely getting excited for not much reason.

 

In some wilderness of Australia, they fought drop bears enhanced by the broken tree branch of some nymph who had vowed revenge against the perfidies of humanity. Or something. Cassandra found out that Lamia could indeed fight in those boots and looked hot doing it. The boots were probably magic. At the end Lamia asked her to show up at Darjeeling in two days and Cassandra said yes without thinking about it. This was obviously turning into a problem and Cassandra swore that she was going to do something about it in Darjeeling.

 

In Darjeeling she had the best hot chocolate of her life. She also found out that the boots actually were magic (seven-league boots that bent space and time) and said “Yes!” and fistpumped, which she blamed on Ezekiel. She did absolutely nothing about the fact that she was having a series of rendezvous with someone who, all said and done, had tried to kill her.

 

She entered the café and looked around, no Lamia. A discreet waiter came up and asked her her name and showed her to an out-of-the-way seat and gave her salted peanuts and a menu card. She was cautiously trying out both when Lamia appeared suddenly.

 

“Don’t bother with the menu, I ordered when I made reservations.” Lamia dropped her bag and sprawled out in the seat opposite. As if this was a signal, a different discreet waiter put a tray together and came to their table.

 

“This place needs reservations? You made reservations? Is this a _date_?”

 

“Don’t be stupid.” Lamia’s tone was bored. She nodded and smiled at the waiter as he put two mugs down.

 

Cassandra had a sip and her eyes widened, “This… is not hot chocolate. This is the most amazing thing ever!”

 

Lamia shrugged as if it was beneath her but her lips curled up in a slight smile. She later casually said, “It has to be pre-ordered, it’s not on the menu.”

 

Cassandra was barely surprised when the omelettes turned out to be heaven on a plate.

 

In Warsaw, Cassandra didn’t even know Lamia was around (except for the way she kept feeling a pricking at the back of her neck and a sense of anticipation, like she was going to learn what made up the universe all over again.) She’d given up on getting the latest artefact. The incidents had stopped all of a sudden in any case, out of the pattern that she had detected. Then she stumbled into the Library, feeling distinctly like lips had brushed across the edge of her cheek and realized that one of the pockets in her skirt was unusually heavy. The artefact she handed over to Jenkins, but the note she hid.

 

It gave a time, a place that seemed to be in Warsaw and a date. It also gave Cassandra a lot to think about and an astounding amount of guilt. So much so that she didn’t even realize she had lipstick staining one cheek until she was determinedly brushing her teeth to go to bed.

 

She arrived in the café to find that Lamia was already there, looking rumpled for once.

 

“Dulaque wanted those, for some reason. I’ve been keeping them out of his hands. You librarians seemed to be the best bet,” Lamia told her abruptly, as soon as she was sitting down.

 

“Really?” Cassandra was honestly surprised, but Lamia bristled up.

 

“I don’t do this for the fun of it.”

 

“Really.”

 

Lamia shrugged, “Well, I only sort of do it for the fun of it. But I really thought it was a good thing. Having all of this power, all of these possibilities all just locked up where it’s no use to anyone.” Her voice trailed off.

 

“It’s funny that it’s called a library.” Casandra felt she was doing that thing she occasionally did where she spoke without really thinking about it. “Because a library is meant to share things, books, knowledge, with everyone. And we just keep it all hidden away.”

 

Lamia looked at her, a slight frown between her brows. “I thought you changed your mind. That you speak the company line.”

 

“No, I,” Cassandra blinked rapidly and then said, “I really believe we should share magic with everyone. Give it to the world. But that isn’t why I joined you. I did it because I was selfish. I left because you were killing people, and it was nearly my fault Flynn died. I didn’t change my mind, I just don’t think you’re going about it the right way.”

 

“And I suppose your lot are perfect, no guilt at all?” Lamia sneered, but it was cracked around the edges. “We wanted to change the world and that doesn’t happen without a bit of spilled blood.’

 

“They aren’t perfect but we don’t kill people.” Cassandra clenched her hands tight around each other where they rested on her lap.

 

“That colonel of yours would, princess.” Lamia’s tone was now dismissive enough to declare the topic closed but then she added, “I’ve done a lot of things I’m not always proud of but I got my training in the Army. You don’t whine and cry about doing what’s necessary.”

 

Cassandra waited patiently for Lamia to get to the point (it counted even if she jiggled in her seat and had to drag herself back from thinking about doughnuts and toroids.) Lamia ordered another couple of cappuccinos, dawdled over the snacks menu uncharacteristically and fiddled with her phone in a way that made it clear she wished it was a knife. Then she said, “I loved him.”

 

“Dulaque,” Lamia clarified, as if Cassandra might have mistaken her meaning. Cassandra remembered with the terrible clarity of her near-perfect sense memory a moment during her brief membership of the Brotherhood when Lamia had looked at her with a considering gaze that had made her feel, just for that moment, like she lived in her body and not just her brain. And then that gaze slipped past her to where Dulaque entered the room. The confession made her feel like the end of that moment had. Like someone had struck her.

 

Now Lamia was looking straight at her, lips tight. “I didn’t need him to love me back. It wasn’t like that. But. He isn’t what I thought. He isn’t doing all this because he understands that we need to put magic back where it belongs. It’s all a personal vendetta to him. And he was using me, us for it.” The hastily changed ‘me’ to ‘us’ wasn’t entirely convincing but she seemed sincere.

 

“So you’re defecting?”

 

Cassandra’s hopes fell from the scorn on Lamia’s face. “Even if I wanted to, which I absolutely fucking do not, your lot wouldn’t have me.”

 

Lamia had another sip of cappuccino, wrinkled her nose and continued, “I’m neutral for now. Or working against Dulaque.”

 

“And the Brotherhood?” Cassandra asked hesitantly

 

A complex look crossed Lamia’s face. Then it dropped back into her usual sharp beauty, “I offered some of them the chance to get out with me, they said no. I’m not going out of my way to fight them but I won’t roll over either.”

 

“I can tell everyone then?” Cassandra checked.

 

Lamia shrugged as she dropped a few bills and prepared to leave. “Do what you like. Don’t come crying to me if they find it suspicious that you’ve been consorting with the enemy again.”

 

“There was no, no _consorting_ ,” Cassandra said, trotting out after her.

 

Lamia waved a hand without looking back and then disappeared.

 

“And I’m telling,” Cassandra yelled after her, while people in the street stared at her talking to herself in what was turning into a theme.

 

Cassandra did not tell. This was partly because she saw very little justification in her own behaviour, mildly because she believed Lamia was telling the truth and mostly because there didn’t turn out to be very much time between the yelling, the fighting and the running.

 

\--

 

 “Angels! We fought angels!” Ezekiel looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to be gleeful or not.

 

“No, Eve and I fought cartoons with wings. You stood there and…”Jake argued with Ezekiel almost absently, still looking shell-shocked.

 

“I didn’t know there were angels in Florida.” Cassandra felt like sitting down on the sidewalk.

 

“Maybe they like the sunny beaches,” Ezekiel mocked. “Anyway, I’m off.” Jake held out a hand and caught him as he was turning to run away.

 

“Let go!” Ezekiel said, irritated.

 

“Look, I’m not sure what’s going on, but it’s really suspicious that we all get calls in the same area at the same time,” Jake said.

 

“Yeah, but the cases are completely different, or we wouldn’t have gotten them in the mini-books,” Ezekiel said, “I’m off to do my bit and get back to Paris. This one auction’s boasting that they’ve got an unbeatable security system so I thought I should take a look.” He beamed and Cassandra couldn’t help but find it adorable.

 

“Do you always have to be…” Jake started, voice low in that way it got when he was suppressing the urge to yell.

 

“You were the one who had the bright idea of splitting up. And I work better alone anyway,” Ezekiel turned around to walk off.

 

“No! We should stick together,” Cassandra said, and the other two startled at her yelling. She couldn’t tell them that Lamia had warned her that the Brotherhood was sniffing around so she hesitated before saying, “I don’t think it’s safe for us to split up if there’s so much magic around here. We don’t know what could happen.”

 

“Oh, right. As if I didn’t know you would take his side. You always take his side.”

 

Cassandra’s mouth fell open, “I… do not always take his side,” she said at the same time as Jake said, “She does not always take my side.”

 

“Ha! Perfect agreement,” Ezekiel said with a smirk, as if that proved something. Cassandra and Jake shared a glance, then without a word they each took one side of Ezekiel and hustled him forward.

 

It was barely a surprise when Flynn turned up with Eve practically at the next corner. They sent Ezekiel off with them to the Library to see if there was any connection between the cases. There seemed to be nothing to connect a kid who had somehow managed to break into NASA with a man who was determinedly drilling for oil and finding it in an area where there wasn’t the remotest possibility of oil with a sudden search for the Holy Grail by the local university’s med lit class. Cassandra caught the pattern when they were on campus and were passed a newsletter talking about the incredible discovery of new tech that would allow for non-invasive, finer surgery even on the brain. The tech was apparently at the campus of the associated medical school a few blocks away.

 

“It grants wishes,” she said, and wasn’t nearly as excited about it as she would have been before she realized that all such wishes came with a cost.

 

“It grants wishes and… and I have to try,” Cassandra repeated. Jake looked at her without the pity she had expected, just a gentle understanding.

 

“I just think it’s too convenient Cassie.”

 

“Believe me, it isn’t convenient at all.” Cassandra’s voice was tight, “It’s only the slightest chance and it’s the only chance I have.” Belatedly she realized that wasn’t quite true but Jake didn’t digress back to her shaky first few weeks. He was kinder than she would have thought if she had considered it.

 

“I wouldn’t…. I wouldn’t hurt anyone, I just want to check it out,” she said. “If it’s hurting people then we’ll shut it down.” No one would ever know what it cost her to say so.

 

Jake let out a tiny sigh and then made an assenting motion, “I’ll hold down the fort while you go check it out. Just be careful. Don’t want to tell the Colonel I lost you.”

 

Cassandra felt herself break out into a smile in gratitude, “Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

 

Jake waved a hand and said, “Go,” but his lips curved into a reluctant smile. “Check-in every other hour, on the hour,” he yelled and Cassandra gave him two thumbs up as she walked away.

 

Jake had phoned to let Jenkins know what Cassandra had suspected and told them they were splitting up, Cassandra was off to the med school campus and he was investigating about the med lit class, none of whom seemed to have turned up to school or home after their hunt for the Grail had started nearly a week ago. He wasn’t worried when Cassandra missed the first check-in, because she often still got like that when she was excited. By the second check-in however, he was already jumpy and the ‘Unavailable’ message on her pone spooked him.

 

It wasn’t surprising that he decked Lamia when she snuck up on him. She swatted it aside before it connected and said, “Where’s Cassandra? Has it got her?”

 

“What?” Jake’s mouth gaped open.

 

“The magical thingy, has it got her? _Where is she_?”

 

“The wishing device, are you after that?” Jake demanded, but his old training still held and since Lamia wasn’t making any move to hit him he couldn’t bring himself to start the fight.

 

“It’s not a wishing device, Dulaque was after it, I came across it before, she’s gone isn’t she? She’s not picking up her phone!”

 

“You’re after the artefact.” Jake was pleased now that he had a handle on what was going on again. “Not Cassandra.”

 

“For fuck’s sake! He told me when he still thought I was loyal. It’s a device that gives you what you think you want but uses people as a sort of battery instead.” Lamia was dragging Jake along until he dug his heels in.

 

“Battery? For what? And why should I believe you?”

 

Lamia almost snarled, Jake flinched instinctively. “There’s no time for this. All of you are the same, talk, talk, talk before you actually _do_ something.”

 

“That talk’s beat you more than once,” Jake retorted.

 

“I’m ashamed, believe me,” Lamia said, “can we have the rest of the witty banter and cross-examination after we save her?”

 

“Yeah, I’m sure you’ve defected. Running away from your precious Brotherhood and your murder-happy colleagues because you want to save Cassie.” Jake didn’t need to work to make his voice sceptical.

 

“I defected before this.” Lamia didn’t say anything further but her face had dropped from its always cool mask.

 

“Battery for what?” Seeing the blankness on her face, Jake clarified, “for the device, what is the price?”

 

“I don’t know.” Lamia looked grim. “But I don’t think it’s good. The conservation of energy principle still applies to magic.”

 

That definitely sounded like she had been hanging around Cassandra a lot. Cassie had a lot of explaining to do. He led her to the door that would get them back to the Library so they could find her, “I swear to god, if you’re screwing me over,” Jake muttered, more to himself than her. If she heard, she didn’t bother replying.

\--

Cassandra later explained it as being in a bit of a dream state. It wasn’t like her trances where she had a puzzle and a goal and knew it. She was barely sure of where she was. She got onto the campus and suddenly nothing made sense any more. She remembered walking into a cave and swimming, even though she had never learned to swim. She also clearly remembered the sense of whatever it was that had overpowered her telling her she would do very well. Jenkins told her grimly that with the amount of magic she was capable of wielding in various alternate universes, no doubt she would have done extremely well for the device’s purposes. It wasn’t evil but it had been created to delve deep into the Universe’s mysteries and it had developed semi-sentience.

 

The only thing she remembered clearly after that was Lamia and Jake calling for her.  


“Please.” Lamia was crying, Cassandra could see the tears and she didn’t get it, because this was it, this was finally Cassandra’s chance and she wasn’t hurting anyone by taking it.

 

“Lamia,” her voice sounded awful and croaky, like she hadn’t spoken in hours.

 

Lamia held her closer, looked into her eyes, and said, “Please, princess. We’re going to save you, I promise, I will save you. Please give it up. _Trust me_.”

 

Cassandra didn’t know what was going on but Jake spoke and said, “Yeah, Cassie, we’ll find something. Please. Just. Let this go.”

 

She let go and the world crashed around her.

 

She woke up to find she was back in the library, in a soft bed and Jake and Eve were arguing—which never happened, so she tried to sit up and get some answers. Not her best plan.

\--

 

“So, it’s ok? Really?” Cassandra beamed

 

“I,” Eve dragged out the word, and then shook her head, “I guess so. Flynn convinced me that everyone deserves a second chance and Jake convinced me that Lamia deserves a second chance. So.”

 

Cassandra hugged her tightly.

 

“If she makes me regret this, I’ll make her regret it,” Eve warned, more for show than anything.

 

“If she makes you regret it, _I’ll_ make her regret it,” Cassandra said, still beaming.  Then she turned around and ran. Then she realized she didn’t know where Lamia was and ran back to ask and Eve gave her a funny look like maybe she was rethinking her stance on the whole Lamia issue so Cassandra just gave her a reassuring wave and a ‘no funny business, no worries at all,’ smile and ran out again.

 

Cassandra hesitated at the gate into Lamia’s room. Despite her recent upgrade to guest it was obvious it had been meant as a jail. In a flash she recalculated her impulse to come here and fling herself at whatever part of Lamia was closest. The time they had spent together wasn’t all that long after all, when she let herself think back.

 

She stood still and let Lamia turn around to look at her. No doubt she had heard Cassandra coming from a mile away. Cassandra smiled nervously and said, “Looks like you’re defecting after all. Sorry! I suppose that’s my fault.”

 

Lamia shrugged like it barely mattered, which was a degree of indifference that Cassandra would never have believed of her. Lamia reached out and Cassandra went to her, almost tripping in her eagerness but catching herself.

 

When Lamia touched her face and looked at her with all of her intensity, Cassandra held her breath and her mind went blank for a beautiful, terrifying tenth of a second. Then Lamia kissed her gently and long. So long that Cassandra was out of breath when she leaned back.

 

“I’m not joining up,” she said, more gently than Cassandra had expected her to. “I don’t believe in hoarding up stuff that could help people. But.” She looked troubled. “I can see that just letting out the whole lot without any warning could be dangerous.”

 

Cassandra leaned in to kiss the melancholy look away, and Lamia was grinning her sly little smile when they stopped. “We have permission from your parents now though. So expect to see a lot more of me.” She waggled her eyebrows in a goofy sort of way and Cassandra laughed.

 

“Oh shame, I was enjoying the star-crossed,” she made a little circle with one forefinger in the air, “thing.”

 

“Star-crossed,” Lamia scoffed, and was about to continue but clearly lost her train of thought as Cassandra leaned in again, her eyes fluttering close.


End file.
